Joe Deeney has urged his side to be better in decisive ‘moments’ following the narrow 2-1 defeat to Cambridge United in the Youth Alliance League.

A first half Alvin Isufi strike wasn’t enough for the young Hatters to take three points back home to Bedfordshire following a quick double for the hosts in the dying embers of the first half.

Deeney, speaking after the defeat in St. Ives, said: “It was a game of moments; I’ve just said it there to the lads about 500 times. In the first half we aren’t in any real danger, they have had a couple of shots on our goal but over the course of the 98 minutes, neither goalkeeper has really had a save to make.

“I thought Ty Lesser did brilliantly with the goal, it was well worked between him and Alvin Isufi, I just wanted us to kick on from there and we never did really.”

With the narrow score-line against the Hatters, lead coach Deeney also lamented the nature of the goals conceded, going on to say: “It’s the last five minutes at the end of the first half that really disappointed me, we are 1-0 up and it turns to 2-1 in a matter of minutes.

“Their first goal is a series of errors because we had three or four chances to clear the ball before it was stood up to our far post and the second goal we didn’t look after the ball from a throw in, and despite my thoughts on the penalty, we gave the referee a decision to make and ultimately, we still had 49 minutes to rectify the situation and we didn’t do that.”

Despite the patchy league form in recent weeks, Deeney was keen to remind his players that there is still plenty of silverware to fight for, stating: “We’ve had relentless Tuesday and Saturday games in recent months, now we have an opportunity to rest and regroup before a game against Gillingham on Saturday. “Then we turn to the Area Final against Wimbledon the following Tuesday, we’ve also got our 17s and 18s PDL Sem-Finals to look forward to, so there’s still a lot of positives to look for in the rest of our season.”

Written by: Liam Wilmot